Mediocre Fred's Mediocre Blog (Ret.)

Red and Blue in Living Color

Today's Musical Selection: "Hooray for Hazel" by Tommy Roe

Hello, everybody! I'm now officially returned from my sabbatical, not tanned, moderately rested and dubiously ready. And today, to commemorate my return, I'd like to tell you a story and see what you think. Much like my story about the curious late-night encounter with my neighbor from back in September, I encourage you to weigh in with your thoughts, and tell me how you'd have handled the situation.

Last weekend, I finally submitted to a haircut. Much like Frinklin, I tend to go as long between haircuts as possible. Usually, when three or four people have made Cousin It jokes, I know it's time to go. I racked up Snide Joke No. 3 the middle of last week, and so on Saturday I stopped in to see my barber.

A note about the barber shop I frequent: Despite living in in the uber-sophisticated Fedroplex, I get my hair cut at what is for all intents and purposes a country barber shop. Tucked away in a nondescript shopping center in Dot-Com Canyon, the shop is a sort of time warp. Upper-middle-aged men in old-fashioned barber's coats shave and trim underneath mounted animal heads (fake, as far as I know) and pictures of sports teams and soldiers. And the barbers are definitely hillbillies. (They hired an Asian guy one time, and thety managed to find an Asian hillbilly. First one I'd ever met.) They talk about hunting and fishing and sports with religious fervor. The environment is quite different than that which I encounter in my normal daily life, but that's part of the reason why I like the place. The other parts are that it's cheap, they do a good job cutting hair, and I have a visceral aversion to the words "stylist" and "salon." I've gone to this place for almost every haircut I've ever had. We go back a long time, the barber shop and I.

On this particular occasion I was attended to by Curtis, which made me happy. Curtis has worked at the shop almost as long as I can remember, and I've had my hair cut by him many times over the years. He cuts a distinctive figure: shaved head to conceal his steadily progressing baldness, Coke-bottle-thick aviator glasses and have his teeth gone. He almost always start with the same joke. As soon as I sit down he says, "So, you want it cut like mine, right?" I say no, and he says, "Well, one day I'll get somebody with that."

On this day, though, he's in conversation with another barber and misses the usual joke, going instead for a simple, "Reg'lar cut?" I said sure. He fastened the cape around my neck and started trimming my sideburns.

"Hey, did you hear what I was tellin' Mike there?" he said.

"No," I said. I hadn't been paying attention; usually the side chatter between the barbers just flows past my head like a lazy river.

"Them Orientals. Have you seen the weird shit they eat?"

I've seen a fair bit of it, but I didn't feel like Curtis was looking for a debate on the merits of shark-fin soup, so I made a noncommittal mumble.

"It's some crazy stuff. Hundred-year-old eggs and half-born ducks. How can they stomach that shit?"

"I don't know," I said. To myself I thought, You ought to get out more, Curtis. But as I didn't feel like irritating a man who was holding a pair of scissors over my head, I kept my mouth shut.

"There's some crazy shit out there. You seen about them A-rabs that have themselves a hundred wives?" He pronounced "A-rab" in the old-school manner, as if it rhymed with "Ahab."

"Yeah, I think I heard that."

"Can you believe that shit? A hundred wives? One's enough. What you gonna do with a hundred? How do you keep up?"

"It'd keep you busy, for sure." I forced a laugh, but I had a distinct sense I didn't like the way this conversation was heading.

"Think he's gotta fuck 'em all every night? That'll wear a man out."

"For sure." I started to squirm in my chair. He kept on clipping. I don't think he noticed; he was telling a story.

"Crazy shit that goes on. You see where, in one of them Oriental countries, Japan or China or somewhere, they'll favor a boy over a girl? Some of 'em, if they get a girl, will kill 'er to get a boy instead."

"It's sad." And it is, indeed, one of the tragedies of the Third World, the treatment of girls, the families who will abandon or kill baby girls because they'd rather have boys. Somehow, though, I didn't think Curtis was about to encourage me to join Amnesty International.

"In one of them countries over there, did you know that if a fimaly wants to have more than one kid, they gotta get permission from the government?"

"It's in China," I said. "Because they have so many people. Over a billion."

"They're fuckin' worse than rabbits." My head started ringing. Curtis obliviously went on cutitng.

"That's not the worst, though," he continued. "I read where some of these Mexican girls, their families sell them into slavery over here. You've got 12-year-old girls becoming prostitutes. Their families sell them into that sot hey can come to this country. Ain't that some sick shit?"

"Sure is," I said. "They must want over here awful bad."

"And it works the other way, too. American girls get shanghaied off to other contries to be prostitutes. Other countries, like China and wherever, there's nothing they like more than a blond-haired white girl, you know what I mean?"

I said nothing.

"But I'll tell ya, the way girls dress now, it's like they all wanna be prostitutes anyhow. I see some of 'em up on the corner, with the high heels and all the make up and shit and the teased-up hair and skirts up to here, they look like street walkers. They look old enough, but you know what I call them?"

"What?"

"Ten to twenty."

I laughed, hollowly.

"We got guys in here who would, though. Mike over there'll fuck a snake if someone'll hold it for him."

Another hollow laugh from me.

"You know, we got a Scotsman who comes in here sometimes. He's really crazy." I wondered to myself about the sort of man that Curtis would think of as crazy. "And I asked him one time, 'Scotty, what the fuck is it with these kilts? You know, you got men wearing skirts.' And he says, 'Cause the sheep can hear a zipper a mile away."

At this point, I was staring hard at the television and wishing he'd hurry up and be done.

"You know how a Scotsman likes a sheep? In the tall grass is mighty fine."

I think I laughed for politeness' sake.

"Hey, you remember Jimmy? Guy used to cut hair in here a while ago?"

I did, in fact, remember Jimmy. He used to cut my hair when I was a kid. I always liked Jimmy.

"He was a great guy, Jimmy. Always said what was on his mind, and didn't give a shit what other people thought."

Oh no, I thought. If I have to hear that Jimmy used to make jokes about "jungle bunnnies" or something, I'll scream.

"Well, one time we'd just hired a new woman barber named Mary. And one of the guys decided to give Jimmy a hard time. He says, 'Hey, Jimmy, you made Mary yet?' Jimmy was about 72 or 73 at the time. And I'll never forget it. He said, 'Boys, I can still plow just as deep, I just can't stay in the field as long.'"

This time I laughed for real. Crude joke, sure, but a good one. And now that I'd stopped cringing, I noticed that Curtis had a way with a yarn. He had a good storyteller's voice, he had an excellent sense of timing, and he knew exactly when to shut the electric razor off so I could hear the important information.

Meanwhile, Curtis went on about Jimmy. "Now, Saturday, that was when Jimmy liked to go coon huntin'. He loved coon huntin'. Well, on this one Saturday night, he went out huntin', but he wasn't out huntin' for no coon. He come back home in his good clothes, good shoes and everything, and there's his wife waitin' at the door. 'Where the hell you been, Jimmy?' she said. 'I know you ain't been doin' no coon huntin' in those clothes.' So Jimmy figures, well, I'm busted anyway, might as well tell the truth. So he says, 'I was out gettin' some.' His wife looks at him hard and she says, 'You're lyin'. Get into bed.' So see, sometimes honesty is the best policy."

I laughed hard as that one. A good story well told. And just after he hit the punchline, Curtis was done with my hair. I paid and left feeling... well, uneasy. Sure, Curtis was a good storyteller, but his loose-minded racial remarks were pretty damned repugnant. I felt queasy with myself for not saying anything to him. And why did he choose to share these thoughts with me? Did he assume he had a sympathetic ear because we're both white? (Despite being a hillbilly-ish place, the shop has a sizable black and Hispanic clientele, due to the composition of the neighborhood surrounding it.)

So here's my question for the audience: What would you have done in my shoes? Would you have complained? Would you have found a way to subtly signal your displeaure with the racial remarks? Would you have disagreed loudly? Would you have walked out? Would you never go back? Or would you have just sat there, like me, and not registered any complaint? And if, like me, you'd choose the last option, do you think maybe that ought to bother us? Is it true that the worst sin is not decrying prejudice when you see it? Or was it not worth picking a fight with someone who's no doubt set in his ignorant ways? And was the fact that he was a great storyteller any sort of mitigating factor? I honestly don't know how I feel about this, so I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

(Now that I'm done writing this, it occurs to me that it would have been a great topic for discussion on Martin Luther King Day yesterday. Unfortunately, I didn't get around to writing it then. So if you'd be kind enough to pretend that I was clever and wrote it yesterday, I'd appreciate it.)

I poked my head up briefly last week to write that synopsis of the state of Ukrainian politics, which I alone apparently found amusing. (You'd be surprised how often this happens. Or maybe you wouldn't.) Loyal reader Tripp was bummed that I didn't address another hot topic:

Aw, Fred, I'm very disappointed that you didn't comment on the Randy Moss faux mooning scandal. It has been all the rage up here in the frozen north. The night of the game our local Fox news lead off the newscasts with the following:

Here is footage of Randy Moss disgracing himself and the Vikings. Look at it again. That is probably the most vulgar display you will ever see on TV. Did you miss it? Let's watch it again a few more times. Tut tut, just terrible. One last look. Later we will get the reaction from Green Bay fans.

In other news, some soldiers died in Iraq today . . .

Well, if you don't mind me discussing it now, long after everyone except maybe Michael Powell has moved on, I'll say a few words.

When I first saw it on TV, my reaction was roughly the same as Joe Buck's (and that of my dad, who was watching it with me). In my defense, there were two key misconceptions I labored under:

(1) When Moss dropped the football on the ground in order to do his faux moon, I thought he was miming something else. I think we can all agree that if he'd done that, it would have been considerably more appalling.

(2) I was unaware of the Green Bay tradition of mooning the opposing team's bus after Packer victory. With that information in mind, suddenly Moss' maneuver went from juvenile to clever.

That said, the reaction of the commentariat to this incident is exactly why I didn't go into sports journalism. It's all so predictable: the old sportswriting guard (mostly older, almost all white) fuss and fume and proclaim the end of civilization as we know it. My personal favorite hissy-fit came from Peter King of Sports Illustrated, who wrote, "Simulation-mooning Lambeau is like mooning the Mormon Tabernacle Choir." The old guard will rage on for a day or two, then the contrarians (largely younger and more diverse) will step in, defending the "outrageous" act and saying that old guard writers are the ones with the problem, implying heavily that anyone who objects to an egotistical jerk showing up is out of touch, fascist and probably racist and then throwing bouquets to themselves for being "down" with urban culture.

Neither side seems to realize just how insufferable their worldview is. You're stuck between harrumphing self-righteousness on one side and smug self-congratulation on the other. The traditionalists don't realize the degree to which they make a selfish, immature punk like Moss into a sympathetic figure. As for the new-schoolers, whom I'm convinced would praise Osama bin Laden if enough old-school sportswriters attacked him... they like to say, "Hey, give me a player of Moss' talent and I'll gladly take the personality." Oh you would, would you? Care to tell me how many championship rings Moss has? Care to tell me about the long list of championship teams structured around the whims of a moody, self-centered jackass superstar with impulse control issues?

So that's why I didn't write about Moss, Tripp. Because the whole debate makes me sick. What he did was hardly the end of the world. The people calling for him to be suspended were off their rocker. On the other hand, I'm loath to defend anything Moss does. I wouldn't want him on my team at any price, despite his obvious talent (when he cares to deploy it). The only think that interests me about Moss is his hair. The Afro makes him a dead ringer for Nat X. Other than that, I didn't really have anything to say. And I didn't think the Nat X thing was worth a whole column.

And with that, I'm off for the day. (Uncle Millie and Aunt Beatrice, by the way, will be back next week, assuming we wrap up the ocntract negotiations then.) Stay tuned for more tomorrow!

Posted by Fred at January 18, 2005 04:57 PM